


There to Welcome You Home

by obstinate_questionings



Series: November Days [3]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Harry Potter fic!, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinate_questionings/pseuds/obstinate_questionings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During Chloe's first visit home in over ten years, Beca and Aubrey surprise her with a trip to <i>The Wizarding World of Harry Potter</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There to Welcome You Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betternovembers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers/gifts), [lowlands](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowlands/gifts).



> This fic is a response to a prompt, "Harry Potter + November Days," for my dearest, [Meg](http://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers) (with a comma after 'dearest') on her birthday, and for the wonderful [Kathleen's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lowlands) half-birthday.
> 
> It takes place in the [November Days](http://archiveofourown.org/series/358553) universe and will likely not make much sense outside of it. It also will probably not make sense if you haven't read _Harry Potter_ , but if you haven't, please go start reading the books immediately instead of this fic; you won't regret it. Thank you.
> 
> Thanks as always to my Chloespiration, [lescousinsdangereux](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lescousinsdangereux), and to tumblah user bbgood for reading this beforehand and sharing their opinions. You are the best!!!
> 
> (Content warning: as with the original fic, there are references to parental death and generally difficult childhood experiences throughout-- for anyone for whom that might be triggering.)

**Sunday, February 14 th, 2021**

_Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home._

Chloe’s eyes focused on the words’ sharp outlines on the glossy magazine paper, how the gold letters popped against the dark bricks on the ground of—well, she guessed it must have been Diagon Alley. Her heart leapt in anticipation for about the thousandth time since Beca had handed her the envelope at the airport the day before and she’d seen her name written on the parchment paper in emerald-green ink:

 _Ms. C. Beale_  
_c/o Ms. B. Mitchell_  
_The Starbucks Queue_  
_Terminal D_  
_Miami International Airport_  
_Miami, Florida_  
_The United States of America_

Chloe knew immediately that the calligraphy, elegant and sloping, must have been Aubrey’s.

“Yeah, an owl dropped this off while you were in the bathroom,” Beca told her, doing her best to sound nonchalant as she took in the sight of Chloe excitedly moving a hand to cover her mouth.

“Is this—”

“Your Hogwarts letter? Don’t tell me you haven’t been waiting for it.”

She had to wonder, when she turned over the envelope to see the purple wax seal on the back, whether Aubrey had bought a Hogwarts stamp or if she had somehow crafted her own. Judging by the unnecessary level of detail used to depict the four animals surrounding the letter “H,” she guessed that Aubrey had, as usual, chosen the more ridiculous option. An image floated into Chloe’s mind of a sculpted butter turkey, perfectly geometric patterns scaling down the vanes of individual feathers.

Beca, her face still a little red from the excitement of giving Chloe the letter, managed their coffee order on her own, looking over just once or twice to catch Chloe surveying the contents of the envelope: one letter of admittance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, one list of required books and materials, and tickets to Diagon Alley and to Hogwarts.

“And a blueberry scone, please,” Beca finished, the corners of her lips rising slightly as Chloe leaned forward, planting a soft kiss on her cheek.

For a moment, Chloe reflected, she had forgotten everything—why they were in Florida, what had to happen next. She’d turned one of the tickets (the words “Platform 9 ¾” large and bold across one side) over and tried to regain her breath as Beca, who’d waited for the server to look away first, stealthily placed a folded five dollar bill into the tip jar on the counter.

“When?” Chloe asked brightly.

Looking down at the pages in her hands, she noticed with slight disapproval that Aubrey had made a significant addition to the book list, sandwiched in between _Magical Drafts and Potions_ and _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_. (Chloe was pretty confident that _Goblins: Our History, Our Heritage_ by Beca Mitchell had not been present on Harry’s original list.)

She turned the paper away from Beca before she could get a better look.

“Well, we thought the day after tomorrow would be a safe bet,” Beca answered steadily, passing Chloe her cup of coffee. “You know, so we can settle in first… and since your aunt will be at work till late.”

Chloe’s stomach stirred nervously at Beca’s explanation—how it dragged a whole world along with it, one she’d never planned to return to—but she didn’t quite stop smiling. Shaking the thought out of her head, she turned her attention instead to Beca’s super intriguing use of pronouns.

“‘We’?” She nudged Beca with her elbow as she asked, immediately regretting it as Beca jerked quickly to stop her coffee from spilling. “Sorry,” she added with an apologetic grimace.

Beca smilingly rolled her eyes as she took a sip.

“Yes, ‘we.’”

“She’s coming?”

It would have seemed incredible if Chloe weren’t, by this point, so _used_ to this kind of thing from both of them.

“ _They’re_ coming,” Beca clarified.

Oh, even _better_. Beca was still smiling—looking, Chloe realized, almost smug—and, yes, her and Aubrey’s attempts to surprise Chloe were starting to seem kind of predictable, but she would never get tired of how happy Beca looked whenever she broke the news.

Chloe tried to imagine the process of planning this particular surprise—had Beca texted Aubrey that first night after Chloe had read her aunt’s email? She strained to remember the details: Beca coming home from work and knowing, as soon as she found Chloe staring at her laptop on the couch, that something was wrong; how she had moved the computer off of Chloe’s lap and told her, gently, that she didn’t have to respond to it that night; how tightly she’d held Chloe as they went to sleep, letting her lips rest softly on the back of her neck.

Had they argued with each other about if Chloe should go home in the first place? Whose idea had going to the _Wizarding World_ been? Was it Beca who’d asked Aubrey to invite Patrick?

Well—it was nice to think about, but the details didn’t really matter.

She put down her coffee and the contents of her Hogwarts letter down on the counter next to the jugs of half-and-half and soy milk, and lightly reached over to take Beca’s cup and the scone in its paper bag out of her hands. When there was no longer anything left for them to spill, Chloe moved both of her hands to Beca’s face and took in the sight of her. Beca, as usual, turned her eyes away from Chloe’s searching gaze. Chloe had to swallow the words her mind kept repeating: _Beca, look at me. Do you see how much I love you?_

Moving forward, she let Beca follow her lead to close the final inch of distance between them. As Beca’s tongue darted softly between Chloe’s lips, she could taste the sugar—too much of it—that Beca always put in her coffee. She didn’t know why, but it made her feel so happy, so safe.

Pulling back slightly, she whispered against her lips: “ _Thank_ you, Beca.”

Beca had responded by pulling Chloe closer with a hand to her lower back, and kissing her more insistently. Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe could see a bewildered middle-aged man standing awkwardly to their right, probably debating with himself whether adding half-and-half to his coffee was worth having to ask them to move.

Chloe laughed into Beca’s kiss, letting one more long moment pass before pulling away and nodding towards the embarrassed fellow customer. Beca, Chloe noticed with interest, didn’t blush. She just slowly let Chloe out of her arms, watching her serenely as she moved to grab her coffee and the scone.

“Sorry about that, dude,” she told the man as she stepped out of the way between him and the milk jugs. He murmured something by way of reply that Chloe couldn’t quite catch.

She picked up her Hogwarts letter and the tickets, giving them one more admiring look before folding the pages back into the envelope and moving it to her bag.

 _Maybe everything will be okay_ , Chloe thought optimistically, keeping her eyes on Beca as they started walking towards baggage claim. _Maybe going home won’t hurt at all._

*

Chloe did her best to summon the memory of that fading hope as she sat across a glass table from her aunt Sarah, staring at the gold letters on an ad for _The Wizarding World of Harry Potter_  while Beca—with just a touch of nervousness in her voice—tried to explain what she and Chloe would be doing the next day. Chloe didn’t think Beca even realized how firmly she was gripping Chloe’s hand in hers; it hurt a little, but Chloe needed it probably even more than Beca did.

Sarah was moving across the country. Chloe couldn’t think of a single reason that news should make her sad; it wasn’t like there was anything in that condominium she really wanted to see again. She hadn’t, in fact, even been back since the summer after her sophomore year at Barden.

It was strange to see so many familiar objects with over ten years of added experience—like the furniture, all white or light brown, most of it barely used, or the art hanging on the walls. Chloe had suddenly realized just a few minutes before that the canvas directly in her line of sight, behind Sarah and just to her left, was a copy of a painting by Franz Kline. Chloe had seen it every day for just over a year, but she hadn’t known enough then to name it. She hadn’t really known anything, back then.

Chloe stared at the ad on the table, at Beca’s hand holding hers, at the paintings she now knew were all really good examples of abstract expressionism, at anything at all but a face that—she had to admit it; of course she realized it—looked so much like her mother’s. (And, as a consequence, looked so little like her own.)

Well, she thought, Sarah was trying, anyway. She wasn’t smiling, or asking questions about the things Beca was saying the way Chloe wished she would, but she _was_ listening. She was nodding along, maybe a little anxiously, as Beca explained (in amazingly civil terms) how Chloe’s best friend was coming to visit along with Beca’s own cousin.

“But—well, you’ve met Aubrey, right?” she asked, and bit her lip regretfully as she saw Chloe, to her right, immediately start shaking her head.

“Well,” Sarah answered, “was she at the wedding?”

“Um, yeah,” Chloe told her. She cleared her throat after speaking; she hadn’t realized her voice would be so strained. “She was the one who gave the toast.”

Beca moved a thumb along the back of Chloe’s hand.

“You know, the one who could barely get through two words about Chloe without sobbing.”

(Chloe could so easily hear it, what Aubrey’s response would have been if she were there— _do you really want to go there, Beca? You of the inability to finish saying your vows?_ But Beca looked fond as she said it; Chloe knew that pointing out Aubrey’s weakness for Chloe was somehow, in Beca’s mind, the best compliment she could give her.)

“I think I remember her,” Sarah said uncertainly, and Chloe thought—maybe she should apologize: she should have been more attentive during their wedding. She should have found someone to sit next to her aunt with whom she could have talked more. But the sudden sinking remorse was more like a reflex than a thought; being around her aunt made her want to apologize like an itch that needed scratching.

“Well, um—we could all come here after we’re back tomorrow,” Chloe offered hesitantly. “If you want,” she added.

“If you’d like,” Sarah replied. Chloe wished she had any idea what that was supposed to mean.

Thirty seconds passed without any of them speaking. Chloe, to her right, could see a family running onto the public beach out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two kids, maybe four or five years old, seemed to be playing tag, kicking up the sand as they ran.

“I’m not sure where the food is,” Sarah said eventually. “It should be here by now.”

“Oh—that’s okay,” Chloe answered. “Thank you for letting us choose what to get, though. Thai food on Valentine’s Day is, like, a thing for us.”

Beca smiled as she said it, and Chloe wondered what she was remembering.

(As for herself, she couldn’t stop thinking about Beca’s earnest face, the cilantro from the green papaya salad still stuck in her teeth as she told her: _all of this is bullshit compared to you_.)

“Of course,” Sarah responded dismissively, watching her niece’s suddenly glowing face with evident confusion. “It’s not a problem.”

“Do you remember,” Beca started, still smiling, “how Anan put all those little carrot hearts into the salad?”

Chloe couldn’t help warming at the mention of it, even if she’d wished Beca had waited till they were alone for this particular conversation.

“Mmhmm,” she replied.

“How did he even do that, do you think?” Beca asked. “Like, did he have a heart-shaped cutter?”

Chloe laughed, and pulled their linked hands onto her lap.

“I don’t know. I guess he must have.”

She could feel Beca’s fingers moving in and out of hers as they talked. It was unexpected, how comforting the touch was.

Beca had turned completely away from Sarah as she stared at Chloe. Chloe knew that she should shake her head, nod towards her aunt, do anything to remind Beca that they were trying to make a good impression.

Instead, she looked back at Beca and thought—she was so beautiful. Her hair was wavier than usual (a gift to Chloe from the local humidity), falling down just a little past her shoulders onto the long-sleeved shirt that Beca somehow, despite the heat, had decided was the right choice of clothes for the day. Her eyes, caught in the sunlight blasting through the windows, looked so full, at least three shades darker than the water outside.

“And then I tried to throw a rose petal at you,” she laughed. “Do you remember?”

Chloe nodded. She did.

“You were so embarrassed.”

Chloe remembered all of it—how much she had _needed_ Beca, how carefully she had been treading. She remembered Beca trying to pull a grain of rice out of her hair, and apologizing when Chloe flinched. She’d still been so surprised, then, whenever Beca was that sweet.

Her aunt was staring at them. Quietly moving her glasses up the bridge of her nose, she looked at her like she was a puzzle, one Chloe didn’t even know how to begin to help her solve.

But, well—wasn’t it always like that? The whole first seventeen years of Chloe’s life, it’d been like she only ever had half a language to speak with.

Beca turned away as they were literally saved by the bell—the food was there. She reached for her purse on the ground, but Sarah shook her head before she could even pick it up.

“I’ll get this,” she said insistently, and Beca looked at Chloe to gauge her reaction.

She _was_ trying.

“Oh, _thank_ you, Aunt Sarah,” she said, and hoped it sounded genuine.

When her aunt turned away to start walking towards the door, she let her smile fall.

Beca moved a hand to rest soft on her leg.

“You okay?” she whispered, and Chloe tried to give a convincing nod.

She moved Beca’s hand back onto the couch.

“I’m just going to go to the bathroom,” she said, and didn’t look to see Beca’s reaction as she stood up.

*

She paused at the door to the guest room before opening it. The hallway looked different, she thought, than the year she’d lived there; she was pretty sure the walls were a slightly different color than they had been then. She wondered whether it’d be better or worse for the room behind the door to have changed. She’d hated everything about it, about the days she’d spent alone in it, but it’d be strange if it no longer even really existed. It’d be like none of it had been real; like she’d just spontaneously burst into existence when she moved into Barden.

(Or, more likely, she thought, when she’d ran down the stairs that November afternoon, following the sound of a piano.)

She opened the door.

Well, she should have realized how full it would be. That was why they were even visiting in the first place, right? She needed to go through her old stuff, hers and her mom’s, before Sarah moved away. She should have known Sarah would have put all the boxes in her own old room.

It took her a moment to get over the weirdness of how small the room looked when it was that full, but after she had adjusted, she noticed that, for the most part, everything was still the same.

Sarah hadn’t even taken down the few things Chloe had used to decorate her walls—the big poster Chloe had bought at a school fair of a brightly colored school of fish swimming over a coral reef, or the map of St. Petersburg she’d pasted up next to her bed. Chloe inched her way through the boxes to get close to it, to find on its winding streets the location of her own apartment from when she’d lived there. She stopped when, to her surprise, she noticed the drawing she’d taped up just over the headboard of the bed.

She’d forgotten that she’d drawn it: the Hogwarts crest. The other three animals looked fine, but Chloe could have done a better job drawing the lion, for sure. She reached a hand up to trace the “H” with her fingers. She couldn’t have been younger than fifteen when she’d drawn it—probably too old for that kind of thing, she guessed.

A thought flashed into her head suddenly: would they still be there? Her heart sped up strangely as she reached for the drawer of her nightstand, right next to the bed.

She laughed when she saw them—all of them were there; she counted. It seemed unbelievable that they would just be there, waiting, like the intervening eleven years had just been a single breath, a pause before she picked them back up again.

Moving them onto the bed, she looked at each of the individual covers. The first book was the only one that had actually been designed as a _Harry Potter_ journal; it had a large snowy owl—Hedwig, she guessed—on the front under the name of the series. She remembered it vaguely, how she’d carried it through the bookstore next to her mother, hoping she’d ask if Chloe wanted her to buy it.

She opened the cover carefully and read the title she’d written in bright pink bubble letters: _Chloe Beale and the Forbidden Forest_. How old had she been when she wrote this first one? Nine? Ten? All she could remember was feeling excitement rush through her as she flipped through the pages, looking at the little lightning bolts, cauldrons, quills, and witches’ hats printed in the corners. It had all felt so _real_ to her. She’d spent about a month after starting the story leaving her window open just a crack, in case she missed the sound of an owl tapping on it while she was sleeping or at school.

The first story was also the only one she had written in first person. (It was also the only one she’d written with a bright pink pen.) She smiled at the first line:

_I love it here at Hogwarts!!!!!!_

For her, at that point, that was a pretty conservative use of punctuation. She skimmed through the pages, tenderly taking note of her former self’s excited imaginings:

_“you don’t know how to play Quidditch?!?!?!?!?! it is the best game ever!!!!!!!!!” she said._

Or

_WE WON THE HOUSE CUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

Each of the exclamation points and question marks was written with an open circle at the bottom, and every so often, she’d given a few of them wings to make them Snitches.

She flipped back towards the beginning, trying to find the passage where she met Jessica, her imaginary best friend in the Wizarding World. She tried to remember the names of all the most important members of her cast of characters: Peter, the Slytherin bully, a clear stand-in for Draco Malfoy; Adam, her friend who loved Care of Magical Creatures as much as she did; Leah, a fifth-year Hufflepuff prefect who taught Chloe how to cast a Patronus charm in the third story; and Moonbeam, Chloe’s centaur friend, who had first encountered her when she went into the Forbidden Forest on her own to find Jessica.

And then, of course, there was her mom. That had been one of the big reveals of the first book, that her mother had secretly been teaching Transfiguration at Hogwarts for the whole time Chloe had been alive.

Chloe found the page.

_“I didn’t even know you were a witch!!!” I said._

_“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you” she said. “It was against the rules.”_

_“It’s okay” I said. “But can you teach me lots of magic???” I asked._

She put the book down.

Her mom hadn’t shown up at all, of course, in the last book, the one she had _definitely_ been too old to write. She’d written it in that room, in her aunt’s apartment, that whole long year before Barden. Chloe wondered now why she had bothered, why it had even mattered to her that she write a final book to round out her magical alter ego’s time at Hogwarts.

She picked up the seventh book and flipped through it, looking at the illustrations she’d drawn so carefully with colored pencils. She stopped to examine more carefully one towards the beginning, in which Chloe, dressed in her Hogwarts robes, knelt to check on the hurt leg of a small animal.

It was actually probably worth another read, Chloe thought. What a strange story it was—none of Chloe’s magical friends made appearances at all. It was just Chloe and a lost, injured creature wandering through the empty Hogwarts castle during Christmas break.

Chloe’s reminiscing was interrupted suddenly by the soft sound of a knock on her door. She felt guilty for thinking it, but the first thing that came to her mind was, _please don’t be Aunt Sarah._

It was Beca.

“Hey Chlo,” she said quietly, searching out her eyes. “Can I come in?”

Chloe nodded, moving a few of the journals to the side to make room for Beca to sit next to her.

Beca pushed her way through the maze of boxes, almost tripping over a tote bag full of magazines a few feet away from the bed.

“Jesus,” Beca muttered, kicking it out of the way.

Sitting down beside Chloe, Beca moved an arm around her, resting her hand beside her leg. With her left hand, she tilted the book down about an inch to get a better look at the pages in front of Chloe.

“Did you do this?” she asked admiringly, and Chloe nodded again.

Beca’s eyes flashed, and she leaned a little closer to the book.

“How have you never told me that you can draw?” she asked, mocking anger.

Chloe laughed.

“I mean—I can’t, really.”

Beca shook her head, still amused.

“Are you kidding?” She pointed at Chloe’s hands in the image, how they wrapped a bandage around the creature’s leg. “I mean, this is so good.”

She turned the pages, marveling at each one of the illustrations.

“Is it… a horse? A baby horse?” Beca asked, pointing at the animal on its first trip to Zonko’s in Hogsmeade.

Chloe shook her head, and moved Beca’s hand aside gently to flip back to the cover page, where Beca could read the title: _Chloe Beale and the Wounded Thestral_.

“Thestral,” Beca said out loud, and Chloe watched the realization wipe the smile off her face. “That’s—those are the animals you can’t see, right? Not till…” She trailed off.

“Yeah,” Chloe responded quietly, letting go of the book and letting Beca take it into both of her hands.

Beca didn’t say anything for a couple minutes; she just kept looking through the book. She stopped at a picture Chloe had drawn of the Giant Squid, halfway submerged in the Hogwarts Lake, waving a tentacle at Chloe and the thestral foal.

“Oh my God, Chloe,” she said, moving a hand to her head. “This is so good.”

“It’s really super basic, Beca.”

Beca shook her head.

“Compared to what I could do, though…” Continuing to turn the pages, she stopped at a picture of the Mirror of Erised towards the back of the journal. “I mean, I’d have to call it _Beca Mitchell and the Full Cast of Stick Figures_.”

Chloe laughed and moved close enough to Beca to rest her head on her shoulder. She looked at the drawing of the Mirror and knew it had to be the last page in the story.

She’d abandoned the project when she’d gotten to that scene. It had been important, as she’d planned it, for Chloe and the thestral find the Mirror so that the animal would realize how much she wanted, despite her friendship with Chloe, to leave and find a family of other thestrals to run with. But when she’d gotten to it, she just couldn’t write it; she couldn’t put down on the page what she knew she herself would had to have seen in the reflection.

It had been too much. She’d wanted—so much.

Beca turned slightly to plant a kiss into Chloe’s hair.

“We’re gonna have to do something like this, you know,” she whispered, and Chloe’s cheeks warmed. “I mean, when we read them to…”

“To our kids,” Chloe finished her sentence enthusiastically.

“Yeah,” Beca replied, and Chloe could hear the smile in her own voice.

They’d been talking about it for over a year, but it was only in the past few weeks that they’d made their decision: after Chloe’s comprehensive exams, that spring, they could start trying. Beca had looked horrified when Chloe had first suggested Patrick as a donor, but, a few days earlier, after coming back from a concert with him and Aubrey, Beca had told Chloe that _maybe_ they could consider him. You know, on a long list of options.

They still had some time to figure it out. But the thought of it—however it happened—was enough to fill Chloe’s chest with a kind of warmth that, when last she’d been in that room, she’d never even dreamed she’d get to feel.

“Totally,” she hummed. “We’ll have to start super early. Reading to them, I mean.”

“I mean,” Beca countered, reaching a hand around Chloe’s side to rest on her stomach, “why wait at all? We’ll just start when we know she’s in there.”

Chloe moved her hand over Beca’s.

“Or he,” she corrected gently.

She could feel Beca’s shoulder shrugging under her.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”

“But yeah, totally,” Chloe agreed. “We’ll read the first chapter when we find out.”

“Oh, yeah—like at the doctor’s,” Beca said, with only the smallest hint of mocking in her voice. “In front of the ultrasound. ‘Chapter One. The Boy Who Lived.’”

Chloe moved her head off of Beca’s shoulder, sitting up straight so that she could meet Beca’s eyes with her own.

“Yes,” she told her, holding her gaze for only a couple of seconds before Beca turned away. “That’s what I want.”

Beca looked back at Chloe and moved a hand to her face, tracing the pad of her thumb across Chloe’s lips. Leaning forward, she kissed her once, softly, sweetly.

“So I hate to say this,” she apologized as she pulled back, “but we sort of have to go eat dinner.”

“Well,” Chloe answered, moving all of her journals back into her nightstand drawer, “I _am_ hungry.”

“Good,” Beca said, and kissed her on the cheek once more before getting up off the bed.

*

Sarah was waiting patiently in the living room when they emerged, just where they had left her. She’d set the food out on the glass table where the _Wizarding World_ advertisement had been earlier; Chloe hoped it hadn’t all gone cold. She could sense herself searching for the right words of apology, but when she saw Sarah’s eyes moving to her and Beca’s intertwined fingers, she closed her mouth.

Sarah looked back up at Chloe, and smiled hesitantly.

All the steps—all the little ones it would take to make it okay that she was there, that she was smiling at her—Chloe didn’t even know if she had it in her to take them.

But for the moment, anyway, she had Beca’s hand in hers, and the waves outside the window were catching the strangest shades in the sunset: peach, aquamarine, mauve.

She squeezed Beca’s hand and started walking them (slowly, calmly) towards the couch.

*

Being back in that apartment, Chloe thought as she tucked herself into the blankets spread over their air mattress, was a little like time travel. There was something about it that required leaving who she was _now_ at the door. She felt like teenage Chloe again, filled to the brim with hopeless longing.

But having Beca there—it was so strange, and it would take Chloe a while, she knew, to be able to understand totally what she meant by this—it was like she got to give her younger self a gift. She got to show her how amazing things would get.

When Beca came out of the bathroom and paused at the threshold to look at her thoughtfully, she tried to think as hard as she could, as if fifteen-year-old Chloe could hear it:

_Look, sweetie; this is what it will be like. This is what you get to have._

Out loud, she spoke to Beca.

“Come here,” she whispered, and she could tell Beca was confused about why she looked so happy.

 _Because I_ am _happy_ , she wanted to answer the unspoken question. _Because I’m so, so happy with you._

Beca moved under the blankets and moved close to Chloe. She reached over a hand, moving it down Chloe’s arm, and Chloe couldn’t help shivering—her hands were so cold. Why was she always so cold?

She stopped Beca’s hand with her own and brought it between both of hers, warming it as well as she could, moving it up to her face to kiss it.

As she brought down her arm, she let her eyes rest on Beca’s face. Her eyes were half-closed, looking down, her gaze resting—it looked like—on Chloe’s shoulder.

Chloe felt it all at once, like a weight landing on her chest. She _needed_ Beca to look at her.

“Beca,” she said quietly, if firmly. “Beca, open your eyes.”

Beca’s eyelids lifted, and Chloe breathed out with relief—she really did have such beautiful eyes. And when she let her look into them, she could see it, that weird, half-heartedly hidden thing they’d always had in common: the way they always, always felt too much.

Beca was smiling, a little embarrassed as Chloe, as serious as she could get, stared fixedly into her eyes.

She did the math in her head. It’d been eight years, eight years since Beca had inched closer to kiss her on the cheek—twice—then moved her lips to the corner of her mouth, and then brought their lips together.

It’d been eight years since Beca had pulled away, lighting up with the words she somehow, unlike Chloe, had found the courage to say.

When Chloe spoke next, it wasn’t because of the memory—it was automatic.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Beca closed her eyes as she heard it—not because it made her shy, Chloe knew, but because it made her happy. A few seconds later, she reopened them, and moved even closer to Chloe, so that she could feel her breath on her neck.

“I love you too, Chloe,” she answered.

She moved a hand back to Chloe’s arm.

 _Good_ , Chloe thought.

Beca’s hands weren’t even cold; not anymore.

*

**Monday, February 15 th, 2021**

Beca, probably the greatest wife of all time, had let Chloe sleep the entire drive to Orlando. When she’d started to gently nudge her awake in the parking garage, she had to move her hand up to her face halfway through to cover a yawn.

Chloe opened her eyes lazily and waited for Beca to lean across the center console and kiss her before breaking the silence.

“Good morning,” she said, striving for brighter tone than she was capable of at six in the morning.

“Sure it is,” Beca responded darkly, reaching for her truly enormous cup of coffee and tilting it into a sip. Chloe guessed that her blood supply had to be at least half caffeine at this point.

“Remind me why we’re awake again?” Chloe pleaded.

Beca sighed.

“Early admission. Hogwarts.”

“Hogwarts,” Chloe repeated, her lips curving automatically into a smile. “We’re _going_.”

Beca turned to look at her.

“We are,” she agreed. “We’re really going.”

The burst of anticipation may have been enough for them to drag themselves out of the rental car, but it was difficult to main excitement during the seemingly endless walk to the park itself.

The sun hadn’t risen yet, and in the dark, the air slightly cooler than usual, Chloe tried to imagine it were real, that they were really making their way to London, ready to tap any brick in a wall three times in the hope it would get them through to Diagon Alley.

By the time they made it to the entrance of the park, Chloe thought she could start to see the first hints of morning light on the horizon. She hoped she was right; Beca’s eyes kept fluttering shut even as they kept walking.

Poor Beca. She wondered if there would be somewhere she could buy her more coffee. She started scanning the crowd.

She hadn’t really needed to worry about keeping Beca awake—within a few seconds of thinking it, Chloe had turned around to the alarming sound of Beca screaming, “oh my God!”

The first thing Chloe realized was that Aubrey was there, just behind Beca. The second was that her wife had pivoted towards her best friend to start feebly hitting her with an empty coffee cup.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Beca asked through gritted teeth as Aubrey caught Chloe’s eyes warmly. She pushed Beca aside dismissively as she made her way towards Chloe and wrapped her arms around her.

“Aubrey,” Chloe whispered affectionately, squeezing her tightly in return. “What did you do to Beca?”

She couldn’t see her face, but Chloe would have bet her ticket to Hogwarts that she was rolling her eyes.

“I just whispered ‘constant vigilance’ in her ear,” she explained. “I only did what Mad Eye would have expected of me.”

“ _Bree_ ,” she said warningly, and Aubrey, as always, relented.

“I’m sorry, Beca,” she said through a forced smile, her eyes betraying her pleasure with how the greeting had gone.

Beca shook her head and sighed.

“Hey Patrick,” she said after a moment, and her cousin, his arms folded across his front, responded with a similar “hey.”

Neither of them made a move to hug the other, which Chloe personally thought was silly, but she was used to it by now.

Chloe held Aubrey’s hand in her own as they made their way through the park to the line. Chloe was surprised it wasn’t longer than it was; she guessed the Early Admission tickets had been worth it. (Chloe didn’t say so, but she was pretty sure 90% of the actual planning must have been done by Aubrey.)

Aubrey checked her phone compulsively as the minutes rolled slowly closer to seven.

“I know this is dumb,” Chloe said quietly, “but I’m actually kind of nervous.”

Aubrey’s eyebrows lifted in instinctive concern, and Chloe wished she wouldn’t have said anything.

“Nervous? Why?”

Chloe wished she knew. The sun was definitely starting to rise now, shedding light on the palm trees and tired tourists, and she strained to envision anything quite as magical as the images in her head beyond the entrance.

She shrugged.

Aubrey pulled her closer into a side-hug and waited for Chloe to rest her head on her shoulder.

“How’s your aunt, Chlo?” she asked gently.

Chloe didn’t answer, but she knew—Aubrey had just wanted to tell her she knew something was wrong.

( _Was_ there something wrong? Chloe didn’t know. She hated how being back home made her feel like this again, so unable to navigate her way around her own feelings.)

A few minutes passed, Aubrey holding Chloe snugly beside her, as they listened to Patrick complain to Beca behind them about Aubrey’s uncompromising campaign to get him to start reading the _Harry Potter_ books.

“Just give in, dude,” Beca interrupted. “They’re really fucking good.”

“I mean, I _will_ —I just haven’t had the time to start them with the whole, you know, moving to New York and getting a job thing.”

“It’s been _months_ , Patrick,” Aubrey said, barely managing to pretend to be annoyed. She turned around to look at him happily, and Patrick, Chloe noted, had to look down to mask the smile he reflexively offered in return.

“I’m just saying,” he said, continuing to do his best to maintain an irritated expression, “I miss being talked to like an actual human being.” He looked at Beca. “She’s decided only to speak in _Harry Potter_ references until I cave.”

Chloe glanced at Aubrey questioningly. Her friend, it seemed, was really quite pleased with herself.

“Okay, that’s actually kind of awesome,” Beca conceded. “That takes commitment.”

“Thank you, Beca,” Aubrey said in a magnanimous tone, and then moved her attention back to Patrick. “ _Accio_ tickets,” she demanded.

Patrick stared back at her blankly for a few seconds.

“You heard the woman,” Beca said, nudging him. “She said _accio_ tickets.”

He took the tickets out of his bag and stared at them puzzlingly, as if Aubrey had asked him to check if they were the right ones.

Chloe took pity on him.

“She wants you to give her the tickets, Patrick,” she explained kindly.

“Oh.”

“Aww, Chlo,” Beca noted with disappointment as Patrick quickly passed the tickets up to Aubrey, “we could have gotten a lot more mileage out of that one.”

But they probably would have had to cut short the conversation anyway, as the line started moving soon after Beca stopped talking.

Chloe hadn’t expected her heart to start racing as she neared the entrance. Aubrey lightly kissed her on the head and let go of her, catching Beca’s eyes as she did. Beca nodded and moved forward to switch places with Aubrey, taking Chloe’s hand firmly into her own.

(They’d think she were teasing them if she ever pointed it out, but it was true: it was so amazing that they always seemed to know exactly what the other one was thinking.)

There were twenty people in front of them—then fifteen, then twelve—and within a few minutes, somehow, even stewing as they were in the muggy Floridian heat, they were somehow in Piccadilly Circus, marveling at the winged figure on the Eros statue in front of them. Only his toes touched the ground as he leapt up wildly, keenly watching his arrow find its mark.

*

Chloe was enchanted. They made their way past the Knight Bus, past the Leicester Square Tube station, past the rows of brick buildings, Twelve Grimmauld Place nestled secretly between them.

“Oh my God, look,” Aubrey exclaimed, pointing upwards at the sour face of a house elf as it moved into the window.

“Aww, poor Kreacher,” Chloe noted sympathetically, and Beca pulled her a little closer.

Chloe _almost_ wanted to keep hanging out in fake London, noticing every detail, every hidden prop. But instead, they followed the growing mass of people making their way through a portal hidden in a brick wall, and Chloe had to take in a deep breath: Diagon Alley.

“Oh, shit,” Beca spat as she jumped at the sight of the dragon on top of Gringotts letting out an actual breath of fire.

Chloe laughed out loud, squeezing Beca’s hand and looking around frantically to decide where to drag them all first.

“Okay, this is actually kind of cool,” Patrick said admiringly, looking down the winding, cobble-stoned street at all the brightly-colored storefronts.

“Well, why do you think I’ve been harassing you about it?” Aubrey asked with mostly feigned indignation.

Chloe read their names quickly as they passed—oh my God, it was Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, and oh, they had to stop by Fortescue’s for some ice cream later, for sure—but without even seeing it, the realization came to Chloe suddenly: Ollivanders.

It had always been one of Chloe’s favorite things about _Harry Potter_ , how a wand would choose the wizard—or witch, more importantly, because finding a wand was one of the things she liked to imagine for herself the best. She had set the scene in her head so often as a kid, even more than the Sorting ceremony. It was just exhilarating, envisioning that moment of _proof_ that she had magic in her, that she belonged.

She’d read that only, like, one in twenty people got to have a wand choose them at the park’s Ollivanders shop, but she really, really hoped it would be her.

*

It wasn’t.

But despite a moment’s disappointment, she couldn’t really complain—the shopkeeper at Ollivanders had turned to a shy little girl, no older than seven, to try out wands.

The girl kept a hand nervously pressed over her mouth as she watched the first wand she picked up knock over a whole shelf of wands on the upper level, and when her second attempt made a bell on the wall in front of them start ringing, she had gasped.

Her parents looked at each other laughingly, her mother leaning over at one point to whisper something to her father. He nodded, and Chloe could see the response on his lips: _right?_  

Chloe looked at Beca beside her, and saw her smiling warmly as she watched the girl’s exaggerated responses. Chloe’s stomach clenched with nervous excitement as she thought to herself: _we have_ so _much to look forward to._

But her whole attention was soon captured by the kid again as soon as the shopkeeper had handed her a third wand. When the light shone on her, from nowhere Chloe could quite see, and the music swelled, Chloe had to stifle a gasp.

The little girl, for her part, suddenly had tears rolling down her face. She was smiling down at the wooden object in her hand like she _knew_ it, like it was part of her now.

When Aubrey heard Chloe sniffing in front of her, she gently moved a hand to her back.

“Oh, Chloe,” she whispered.

*

It wasn’t like Diagon Alley was really big enough for them to spend as much time in it as they did, but Chloe wanted to see _everything_ , and none of the others made the slightest effort to stop her.

But by eleven thirty, they were starving.

“We could eat at the Leaky Cauldron,” Aubrey explained, pointing out their location on a map she’d pulled from her bag, “but I think we should just cross over to Hogsmeade and eat at the Three Broomsticks.”

Chloe nodded rapidly, knowing exactly what that meant—they’d have to take the Hogwarts Express.

The replica of King’s Cross Station was one of Chloe’s favorite parts yet—just, how much thought they had put into everything, how she didn’t even have to work hard to imagine she was on her way.

“Shit, this is really cool,” Patrick said—again—and Aubrey’s laugh that followed was half delighted, half vindicated.

Walking through Platform 9 ¾ and taking in the sight of the bright red steam engine on the other end was almost too much for her.

“Beca, _look_ ,” she kept whispering reverently, and Beca answered every time, “I know.”

The compartments on the train were _real_ ; it was all real.

She loved how they’d planned it, watching the silhouettes of Hermione, Harry, and Ron pass by them through their closed door. She could have done without the Dementor section of the train ride, but she appreciated the references to the third book.

Beca and Aubrey, sitting opposite from each other in the compartment, were arguing about Sirius Black, whom Aubrey found supremely annoying, especially in _Order of the Phoenix_.

Literally inching away from the drama, Chloe let her mind wander to the very moment she had fallen in love with the series. She could name the exact place and time—reading the first book on the beach during the summer she turned nine, just after her birthday, right before Harry’s. Reading it there had maybe not been the best idea; sand had gotten stuck between the pages and stayed there for years.

From the start, she’d liked it so much, and she read it quickly, but it was the scene on the train that hooked her in forever.

Harry watched Ron resign himself to his lumpy sandwiches, and had asked if he’d swap for one of his pasties. She had memorized the line:

_“Go on, have a pasty,” said Harry, who had never had anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with._

That—then—is when she first thought about leaving her window open in case an owl dropped by. Maybe one day, she thought, she’d have what Harry had.

Maybe one day, she’d be on the Hogwarts Express, surrounded by people she loved, with whom she could share everything, absolutely everything.

*

Beca reached over Aubrey’s shepherd’s pie and Butterbeer to hand it to her.

“Look,” she said softly, and Aubrey had taken the book into her hands without comment.

Beca had asked Chloe if she could bring along her first _Harry Potter_ journal, but Chloe hadn’t realized it had been to show Aubrey. Their friendship, Chloe thought, was always better than she even imagined.

When Aubrey opened the cover to see the title, her eyes snapped up in surprise to find Chloe’s. She smiled broadly at her best friend, and adjusted her hands to hold the book more lightly, as if it were very fragile, or precious.

“ _Chloe Beale and the Forbidden Forest_?” she asked.

Chloe shrugged.

“I was nine, I think,” she explained.

Aubrey held the pages up to Patrick on her right, and she flipped through the pages carefully, stopping to read passages every few seconds.

“This is perfect, Chlo,” she said eventually. “It’s so you.”

Beca held out her hand and, with a quick last look at its pages, Aubrey closed the book and passed it back.

“Actually,” she said as she did, as if she were just remembering, “I had something like that too, as a kid. Not exactly a story, though—mostly just to-do lists for my time Hogwarts.”

“Oh, Jesus, Aubrey,” Beca interjected, but Chloe loved it.

“I would _love_ to see that, Bree,” she told her.

(Judging by the reaction on Patrick’s face, he would have loved it maybe even as much as Chloe.)

Aubrey took a bite of her shepherd’s pie, thinking.

“Um, well,” she said after a moment. “It doesn’t exist anymore.”

She was still smiling, but her eyes darkened as she explained.

“I threw it out,” she added quickly, like she was embarrassed.

Chloe reached across the table to take her hand. Aubrey gripped it tightly.

“Well,” Chloe started out hesitantly, “do you remember anything from it?”

The corners of Aubrey’s lips lifted into a smile.

“I mostly just really wanted to win the Triwizard Tournament, to be honest.”

Beca choked on a sip of her Butterbeer.

“Yeah, maybe if you killed the competition in their sleep,” she laughed.

Aubrey ignored her.

“I also really wanted to find a way to rid the castle of Peeves,” she went on. “He was always so _infuriating_ to me.”

Aubrey’s eyes flashed with a sudden realization. She moved her hand out from under Chloe’s to place it in front of Beca.

“Beca, I am truly sorry I have called you a Gringotts goblin all these years. I was wrong. Your Wizarding World equivalent is _obviously_ Peeves. My bad, entirely.”

“Aubrey,” Chloe warned, predictably.

“Don’t worry, Chloe,” Beca stopped her. “I stopped listening to Miss ‘I Must Not Tell Lies’ Posen over here a long time ago.”

Patrick looked from Beca to Aubrey, trying to figure out if what Beca had just said was an insult.

“I really just have to read these books,” he murmured.

Chloe, Beca, and Aubrey answered loudly and simultaneously—yes, you really, really do.

*

Aubrey made a unilateral decision to start reading the first book to all of them on their way back to Miami.

She had to pause at the end of the first chapter to rant about Dumbledore, how his explanation of why he was leaving Harry with the Dursleys made no sense at all.

“And he’s lying, dude,” Beca cut in from the driver’s seat. “We learn that later.”

“ _Spoilers_ , Beca,” Aubrey chastised her, nodding towards Patrick in the seat beside her.

“I just mean—Patrick,” Beca caught her cousin’s eyes in the rearview mirror, “you have to get used to seeing how manipulative Dumbledore is. Just flag it.”

“Well, _obviously_ ,” Aubrey agreed.

Chloe looked out the window at the lush green of the trees as they passed. They were right, she guessed, especially after what you learn in _Deathly Hallows_ , but—she didn’t know.

“Well, and he’s just like Snape,” Beca went on. “You know, it was never about _Harry_. Harry was just a means to an end for him. For both of them.”

“Beca, as I have already said— _spoilers_ ,” Aubrey reminded her. “But I completely agree.”

Chloe remembered reading it for the first time: Dumbledore finding Harry sitting (cross-legged, as she pictured it) in front of the Mirror of Erised. _It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts._ She’d imagined herself sitting there, too, and had thought how nice it would be, Professor Dumbledore watching her and knowing just what she wanted and why.

“I think he did care about Harry,” she said quietly, and Beca and Aubrey stopped talking. “I mean—I don’t know. You’re right about all of that stuff. But I think he did love him.”

Beca, her eyes still on the road, silently moved her hand to the center console, palm upwards. Chloe grabbed it tightly.

Aubrey found her place in the book, and continued reading.

*

As they neared Aubrey’s and Patrick’s hotel, only five minutes away from Aunt Sarah’s apartment, Chloe started to feel a sinking sensation in her gut.

She didn’t want the day to end; she didn’t want to go back. She imagined walking back through the fern-filled, bright-colored lobby, up to the elevator, down the hallway to her aunt’s door, just like she had every day, alone, for over a year. It was exhausting— _she_ was exhausted—just thinking about it.

All those boxes. All those things. All the small talk on the white couches.

She couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to do it.

When she stepped out of the car to say goodnight, Aubrey pulled her into a hug that lasted just long enough for Chloe to know her friend was worried.

“Did you have a good day, Chlo?” Aubrey asked gently, and Chloe was nodding before she even finished the question.

“Oh, Bree—thank you so _much_ ,” she said hastily. “I should have said that before. Like, a million times.”

Aubrey leaned down to kiss her on her forehead.

“That’s not why I’m asking, Chloe,” she explained. Her brow furrowed, she sought out Chloe’s eyes with her own. “Are you okay?”

This was the thing—whenever Aubrey or Beca asked that of her, when they looked at her like that, she always felt like she _was_.

She nodded, hesitantly.

“I _love_ you, Aubrey.”

She hadn’t known why she’d felt the need to say it just then, but, whatever the reason, she would never tire of Aubrey’s genuine responses.

“I love you so, so much,” she told Chloe, sounding out the individual syllables like a measure of staccato notes.

“We’ll see you in the morning, right?” Patrick asked, and Chloe moved her eyes to look at him, too, with so much affection.

“We will,” Beca answered for them. “Assuming by morning you mean noon, because that’s when I plan to get out of bed tomorrow.”

Aubrey clicked her tongue disapprovingly, but Patrick laughed.

“We’re on the same page, dude,” he answered, and Aubrey rolled her eyes.

“Goodnight, sweetie,” she told Chloe, squeezing her hand one more time before walking away with Patrick.

*

Chloe listened to Beca and Sarah talking over dinner. She could hear her own contributions in her head, all the things she could have added, but the words just wouldn’t find their way out of her mouth.

Beca was talking about the switch she’d been making over the past year into writing original music—how she’d never thought she really could, how Chloe had convinced her, how she couldn’t have done it without her.

Chloe wanted to share something very much; she wanted to talk about the song Beca had written for her. _You’ve probably heard it_ , she wanted to say. She wanted to tell Sarah the meaning of the numbers in the song’s super cryptic title, “43 58 70 20”—no one could figure it out. (She’d read the theories online; they were all wrong.) _It’s from the longitude and latitude of Beca’s family’s cottage in Maine_ , she wanted to say.

 _It’s where we first kissed_ , she could have gone on. _It’s where I first thought that maybe she might love me._

 _It’s where I stopped being so_ afraid _, like I always was then, like I was here, every single day of it._

She just—she couldn’t open her mouth.

*

After dinner, they walked back to the room they were staying in silently. Chloe could feel Beca’s questioning eyes on her, but she didn’t turn to look at her. As soon as she did, she knew she’d—

She waited till she could close the door. She looked at Beca; she started crying.

Beca reached over quickly, placing a hand at her side, wiping the tears away from her eyes with her other one so carefully.

Chloe hated it, how hard she cried.

Harry was never like this—she’d thought the same thing before so many times. He would just stare at things achingly; he’d feel a deep sadness within him. He hardly ever sobbed. She’d thought it to herself over and over again when she’d lived there, her senior year of high school. She’d told herself she had to be stronger, harder, braver, like Harry. She never was. She never stopped sobbing.

She barely noticed it when Beca took her hand into hers and led her to the air mattress, guiding her to sit down on it. Beca moved her hand calmingly over her back, waiting for her breath to even out.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said eventually.

Beca shook her head.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said quietly, moving Chloe’s hair behind her shoulders. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Chloe wiped away her remaining tears.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Beca asked hesitantly.

Chloe took in a deep breath. There were a lot of things she could say, she knew. Beca would listen, and she’d be so thoughtful, so sweet, just like she always was.

But it wasn’t what she wanted, really. She just wanted to be in her arms again, and safe.

She shook her head.

“No?” Beca asked, to be sure.

“No,” she said. “Really.”

She pulled away from Beca’s hand on her back to lie down on the mattress.

“Can you just hold me?” she asked.

Beca didn’t hesitate. She rolled in next to her, wrapping arms around her and pulling her close.

She had somehow gotten cold again, Chloe noticed. She reached behind her to pull the blanket up further over Beca’s arms.

Beca leaned forward and planted a kiss on Chloe’s neck.

“Hey, I have another idea,” Beca whispered from behind her.

Chloe smiled, and turned her head slightly.

“Yeah?” she asked.

For a second, Beca pulled away, and Chloe ached stupidly even with only that momentary absence. But she had rolled over, she realized, to pick the book up out of her bag. She moved back into position, bringing her hand holding the book around in front of Chloe.

“The thing is,” Beca explained, “if we’re gonna be reading these to a kid soon, I really have to practice my voices.”

Chloe laughed, and leaned back more snugly against Beca.

“I’m serious, Chlo,” she went on. “We have to make a good impression or they might decide they hate _Harry Potter_.”

Chloe shook her head at the thought.

“No,” she told her. “That can’t happen.”

“I agree,” Beca said.

With some difficulty, given their positioning, Beca managed to flip to the point in the book where Aubrey had left off.

“They had a good time eating the Every Flavor Beans,” Beca started. “Harry got toast, coconut, baked bean, strawberry, curry, grass, coffee, sardine, and was even brave enough to nibble the end off a funny gray one Ron wouldn’t touch, which turned out to be pepper.”

Chloe closed her eyes and imagined herself back on the Hogwarts Express with Beca, Aubrey, and Patrick.

She was so, so lucky.

*

**Tuesday, February 16 th, 2021**

They did, after all, end up waking up before noon. The sunlight had been too inviting, when she and Beca had woken up, the water had been too beautiful as it sparkled against the light.

They’d walked down to the beach alone first—they’d call Aubrey and Patrick later, they decided. Taking her hand in hers, Chloe had led Beca up to the darker line of sand in front of the water, and waited for the waves to roll in over both of their feet. She couldn’t believe that Beca shivered at it; it wasn’t even chilly.

They weren’t the only ones there—Chloe watched a little girl, just about the age as the one from the wand choosing the day before, be thrown up into the air by her mother, over and over. She laughed so hard each time as she hit the water.

Beca, to her surprise, pulled Chloe’s hand along as she started to walk further into the water. When it was up to their knees, she stopped to take Chloe’s other hand into hers.

“You look really beautiful right now,” she said timidly. “Just FYI.”

Chloe could feel the sun on her back, how it burned, and honestly, it didn’t make her feel anywhere near as warm as what Beca had just said.

“Beca,” she started hesitantly. “I want to ask you something.”

She bit at the inside of her lip as soon as she had finished saying it.

She didn’t know why. She knew she didn’t have to be nervous anymore; Beca’s eyes said _yes, of course_ before she had even asked the question.

“Yeah?”

“Um, yeah.”

Chloe took in a breath.

“Being here…” She squinted in thought. “It makes me think about things, I guess. About when I was younger.”

“I know,” Beca told her, nodding. “I know it does.”

“I just—it was kind of awful.”

Beca tilted her head in concern.

“I know,” she said again, lowering her voice.

“I mean, I’m not saying—I know it could have been a whole lot worse. And it is for some people, right?”

Her eyes focused on the girl and her mother again; the mother was swimming slowly, pretending to chase her daughter.

“It just…” Chloe shrugged. “It didn’t have to be that way.”

“No, it didn’t.”

The girl was screaming happily, and Chloe loved the sound so much.

“Well… anyway.” She sighed. “If you don’t think this is a good idea, that is totally, totally fine, Beca. But I was wondering—well, do you think you would ever consider adoption?”

She had said the whole thing so quickly, she might have wondered if Beca had even understood what she said.

But there was no question about it: her wife was smiling way too brightly not to have gotten the message.

“Yeah, Chlo, of course,” she said eventually, letting go of her hands to rest them on Chloe’s hips. “Honestly, I’m an idiot not for thinking of it first.”

Chloe moved her hands over Beca’s, squeezing both of them.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Beca answered. Her eyes followed the streaks of light along the water; she looked so calm. “You know, I can really see it.”

Chloe could too. There were so many questions, so many things they’d have to look into, but she could. She could really see it.

Beca’s eyes flitted back to Chloe’s suddenly.

“We’ll figure it out when we get home,” she told her abruptly. “Swim with me?”

Chloe nodded, and let go of her hands. She shut her eyes before diving down into the water, letting it welcome the whole of her as she kicked down close to the sand.

When she moved back up to the surface, the slightest taste of ocean salt on her lips, Beca was there next to her to move her hair out of her eyes. Beca’s feet, she realized, noticing the height of the water, must barely be on the sand. She must be standing on her toes.

The feel of her palms on Chloe’s face was just so warm, so wonderfully familiar.

Just a few more minutes, Chloe thought. Just a few more, and then they’d get out to call Aubrey and Patrick. They’d join them in the water, and Aubrey would immediately try to splash Beca in the eyes. Chloe would try to stop Beca from retaliating, and Patrick would watch the whole scene, amused.

Chloe laughed at the thought, as if it were actually happening. Beca looked back at her with confusion, but Chloe didn’t explain. She just reached her arms around her, kissing her once before breaking free to dive back down into the water.

All was well.


End file.
